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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

tosh.

Copper; items made of copper.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/tɒʃ/Received-Pronunciation/tɑʃ/General-American/tɔʃ/Australia/tɒʃ/New-Zealand
  1. Copper; items made of copper.

    UK · obsolete · slang · uncountable
  2. Valuables retrieved from drains and sewers.

    UK · rare · slang · uncountable
  3. Rubbish, trash, (now especially) nonsense, bosh, balderdash

    UK · slang · uncountable
  4. A bath or foot pan

    UK · countable
  5. Easy bowling

    derogatory · slang · uncountable
  6. Used as a form of address.

    UK · humorous · slang · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From 19th-century British thieves' cant, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from *tarsh, a metathetic alteration of trash; or from toss. Sense of nonsense possibly influenced by tush (“nonsense! tsk tsk!”) attested from 15th century.

verb/tɒʃ/Received-Pronunciation/tɑʃ/General-American/tɔʃ/Australia/tɒʃ/New-Zealand
  1. To steal copper, particularly from ship hulls

    UK · obsolete · slang
  2. To search for valuables in sewers

    UK · slang · uncommon
  3. To use a tosh-pan, either to wash, to splash, or to "bath"

    UK
Where this word comes from

From 19th-century British thieves' cant, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from *tarsh, a metathetic alteration of trash; or from toss. Sense of nonsense possibly influenced by tush (“nonsense! tsk tsk!”) attested from 15th century.

adj/tɒʃ/Received-Pronunciation/tɑʃ/General-American/tɔʃ/Australia/tɒʃ/New-Zealand
  1. Tight.

    Scotland · obsolete
  2. Neat, clean; tidy, trim.

    Scotland
  3. Comfortable, agreeable; friendly, intimate.

    Scotland
Where this word comes from

Compare Old French tonce (“shorn, clipped”) and English tonsure.

adv/tɒʃ/Received-Pronunciation/tɑʃ/General-American/tɔʃ/Australia/tɒʃ/New-Zealand
  1. Toshly: neatly, tidily

    Scotland
Where this word comes from

Compare Old French tonce (“shorn, clipped”) and English tonsure.

verb/tɒʃ/Received-Pronunciation/tɑʃ/General-American/tɔʃ/Australia/tɒʃ/New-Zealand
  1. To make ‘tosh’: to tidy, to trim.

    Scotland
Where this word comes from

Compare Old French tonce (“shorn, clipped”) and English tonsure.

noun/tɒʃ/Received-Pronunciation/tɑʃ/General-American/tɔʃ/Australia/tɒʃ/New-Zealand
  1. A half-crown coin; its value

    UK · countable · obsolete · slang
  2. A crown coin; its value

    UK · countable · obsolete · slang
  3. Any money, particularly pre-decimalization British coinage

    UK · archaic · slang · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From 19th-century British slang tosheroon, from or alongside tusheroon, of uncertain derivation from British slang caroon (“crown, a 5-shilling silver coin”), from Sabir and (originally) Italian corona (“crown”). The term was either derived from or influenced by madza caroon, the British slang for the Sabir and Italian mezzo corona (“half-crown”), possibly under influence from tosh (“copper items; valuables”) above or from the half-crown's value of two shillings & sixpence.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.